


I'm Here

by Synchron



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Forgiveness, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst, Reconciliation, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synchron/pseuds/Synchron
Summary: "How is that not proof that she loved you more than anything?"
Relationships: Dante & Eva & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 149
Collections: Miscellaneous Must-read Fics





	I'm Here

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Mother's Day...?!
> 
> This came to me completely on a whim when I reblogged some fanart at like 1am while I was in bed on Saturday, and I scrambled to open a new gdoc on my phone to get the idea down before it left me, and so here it is..?! It's a premise that's probably been done a thousand times before, but here's my own take on it.
> 
> I hope it hits all the notes that I want it to. 😔🙏

To say that Dante is not as smart as he looks would be severely discrediting to the younger Sparda twin. His ignorance is largely by design, intended to bring happiness and induce laughter in others. He likes hearing those things from people; seeing smiles on their faces as they chide him for whatever idiotic remark he'd conjured up. And he's gotten so good at those, too. Having gone so long without any reason to express either of those sentiments for himself, it's become something of a coping mechanism for his more melancholy days.

So he knows that whenever his brother passes by his desk, whenever he tries so hard not to linger too long, staring down at that portrait of their mother in a sombre silence, that that's how Vergil copes. When that happens, as sporadically as it happens, Dante knows the colour that fogs his brother's eyes is that of a bitter loneliness. It's a shade that he knows extremely well; a curse that walks hand in hand with Sparda's legacy.

More than anything else, Dante hates that colour. Hates it more than olives. More than Mundus. More than his own self loathing that he's still trying so hard to work through. But his brother couldn't be more different from him; jokes and deliberately feigned ignorance won't work for someone like Vergil who finds peace in silence. No, what his brother needs is closure.

Looking at the calendar propped up on his desk (it was free with the newspaper!), Dante notices it'll be Mother's Day soon.

* * *

In contrast to Dante, Vergil's aptitude for reading between the lines is something that he neither broadcasts nor hides, but merely keeps contained within silent observation. This is how he knows full well that Dante is planning something; ever since they were children, there would always be a telling glimmer in Dante's eyes, and a particularly infuriating sense of _knowing_ in his smile that Vergil always found completely reprehensible.

That, and well, the fact that Dante's circled a very particular date on his desk calendar with a marker.

Mother's day.

Today.

Come to think of it, Vergil wistfully recalls, Dante was always the one who planned ahead for that too.

"Verge, come on!" Dante calls him from the door of the office, voice booming and teeming with impatience. He holds it open with his boot while he attaches a note to the outside:

**CLOSED ON PERSONAL BUSINESS**

Not that they've had much business in the past few weeks, but the note helps sell the implication to the contrary.

From inside the office bathroom, Vergil leans over the sink and stares with sullen eyes at his own reflection. He never breathed a word of it to Dante of course, something to do with the pride of an older sibling, but he's been dreading this day. For so many years, he chased an ambition that sheltered his insecurities, never really facing them with the same steadfast, straight-forward manner he pursued his father's power with. Never really wanting to, to be quite honest. He's older now, thinks of his past, younger self as brash and foolish, yet he can't rightly say that he's matured since then. Not when he's hiding away in the bathroom, brimming with an anxiety that makes him wary of going to see his own mother. What would she say to him if she saw him now? He razed the city they all grew up in not once, but twice. How many were killed? How many are still unaccounted for to this day? The exact numbers will never be known, but that very notion is what makes it as nauseating as it is a tangible, physical weight. Blackened clumps of disgust at his own actions that both sink low in his gut _and_ collect upon his back, making his body feel so cumulatively _heavy_ that some days - during his worser days - he wonders how he manages to stand on his own two feet at all when he carries the immense burden of dried, coppery dust wherever he goes.

He doesn't deserve to go to see her. Not after Temen-Ni-Gru. Not after the Qliphoth. Not even after all these years. He deserves nothing more than to remain the son she couldn't find, for he has no words to express the abyssal depths of what _that day_ meant for the both of them; she, a mother who lost her life, and he, a then young boy who lost an entire lifetime–

Vergil's fingers grip the edge of the sink, and his eyes narrow at himself. Already, he's getting swept away in this torrent of thoughts, and he hasn't even left the building yet. It's laughable. It's pathetic. Even he can admit that much. Surely this can't be what it means to be a Son of Sparda. He can't go see her like this. He'll never be ready.

Sharp hearing picks up on a frustrated sigh before heavy boots clomp over the old floorboards towards the bathroom. Dante doesn't knock, merely yanking the door open to tilt his head at his brother.

"It's just a quick visit to see ma, we're not goin' to the goddamn Met Gala, okay? You look _fine_."

Vergil's reflection watches Dante from out of the corners of his eyes, and in the pale white of the bathroom light above, accenting dark circles and a haggard, weary expression, Vergil looks far from fine, and _feels_ even further from it. But Dante is persistent, reaching inside to tousle at his brother's hair in a gesture that's so mockingly familiar, it almost burns. Vergil bats the hand away, hides the twinge in his chest beneath a disgruntled look and smooths out his hair again.

Letting his hand fall back to his side, Dante tries again, voice a bit gentler this time. "She won't care what you look like, man, you just need to show up." He pauses, trying to find the right words. Trying to think of what their mother would say, back when Vergil would sulk in his bedroom. Kind of like what he's doing now. "She's been looking for you this whole time."

"You would know, wouldn't you?" The bitterness is palpable on Vergil's tongue, tasting just as vile as it sounds. The man in the mirror suddenly looks like a complete stranger, mouth moving, words emerging, yet nothing about the figure feels genuine; it lashes out automatically to protect something so feeble and fragile... The Vergil inside the glass continues his thought, and the one in the real world finds it hurts him too. "You both always had your secrets."

Dante looks down, voice so quiet now that the buzz of the lightbulb above is nearly enough to drown it out altogether, and Vergil knows he's taken it too far. "Don't do this, Vergil. Not today." For another few seconds, the constant low thrum of the light above is all that's heard in that tiny, mildewy space, until Dante feels a gentle pressure on his shoulder as Vergil walks by him, out to where the air is clearer.

"We should go."

It's as much of an apology as Dante is ever going to get, and for now, it's good enough.

* * *

Two years. For two years, Vergil has made every possible excuse to avoid returning to the place of his birth. In part because it recalls vibrant memories of a lost childhood, but also because this was also the birthplace of something more insidious and truly abhorrent. Something that grew to cast upon Red Grave a cold, cruel shadow. There is much he hasn't reconciled about returning to the old manor that, somehow, by some stroke of sheer luck, is still standing. But he figures he can start, albeit a little nervously, with the headstone that lies in what used to be a vast garden. A garden of eden.

The garden of Eva.

It's seen much better days; the ground is uneven, still split by the remnant tracks of pulsing, oozing tendrils, more rocks and pebbles and chunks of debris now than soil. No flowers grow here anymore; life is not simply devoid, but completely and hopelessly negated in its entirety, overrun with artificial, otherworldly scars. Where everything was once a lush green, dotted with every colour of the rainbow, it is now a lifeless grey, all cold, earthy tones that are so unlike the warmth their mother exuded with an effortless grace. Even the sun, in all its brilliance, does not shine as brightly over the manor anymore. The glory days of the Sparda Estate are long, _long_ gone now, with only a lonely dried up maple tree to mark the remains of what used to be an abundance of life, and a labour of love. And perhaps worst of all, Vergil thinks he can smell the coppery tang of blood on the wind, a stench that haunted him for months upon his return as a singular entity. It's dizzying, nauseating, growing more potent when he hears the phantom pulsing of the Qliphoth inside his own head, louder and louder and _louder_ it drums, the only sound he remembers when he spent an entire month in idleness while he grew strong on the lives stolen from so, so many--

Vergil clutches the bouquet of flowers to his chest, grounding himself with the crinkle of plastic underneath his fingertips. His jaw clenches, and he tries to focus, tries to think; of how scratchy it feels against his skin; the constant popping and rustling of coloured cellophane, instead of the overwhelming beating of a telltale heart… Snap, crackle and pop. Snap, crackle, and pop. Until the drumming fades, and the wind smells of flowers instead. Of warm tea and honey with a hint of zest.

When he comes to, carried by his own two feet and guided by Dante's hand at his back, he's looking down at a simple headstone. It bears no other words but her name - it would be impossible to keep any account of her succinct enough to fit upon such a small space - but all around it are engraved flowers; a sprig of lavender, a sunflower, daisies, jasmine, iris, … and so many more that he doesn't recognise by name, yet still knows from a distant, deeply etched memory. It's a headstone that no child could possibly have put together, not when it overflows with such depth, warmth and so much _thought_. It says nothing of the woman it is an ode to, and yet also means absolutely everything; an entire garden, an entire irreplaceable being, condensed into one simple object.

This is the love of a son.

"I came back sometime after Mallet to put this here." Dante explains, unprompted, yet knowing Vergil is curious. "Didn't really have the money for it until then, you know? Hopefully it does her justice."

"It does." When Vergil says that, he feels a gust of wind filter through his hair, soft and somehow warm even though the garden is dead and still and silent.

Dante smiles, a little wistful, a little sad. "It isn't complete yet though. I'm not the best with flowers, but I think there're two missing." He nods to the modest bouquet that Vergil is still holding; an assortment of yellow roses and purple hyacinth. The message unsaid is clear:

_It won't be complete without your contribution._

_It could_ never _be complete without your contribution._

And so with one final glance over at his brother, then to the familiar flowers at his chest, Vergil slowly kneels before his mother's grave, his mouth dry, and his usual easy eloquence failing him. There are no words he can say, but the language of flowers is vast, and he hopes, as he places them down at the base of the grave, with a hollow ache in his chest, that their message makes their way up to her.

"I don't know why you think she didn't love you." Dante watches as Vergil's head lowers, shoulders going slack from that unseen weight again. "She always found me and dad first in hide and seek, because she kept you for last."

In Vergil's mind, fragments of images begin to flicker, igniting buried memories and long abandoned senses.

_Excited, hushed giggles. 'I've found you, Vergil.'. A heavy curtain drawn back to reveal a laughing face. A faceless boy jumping right into open arms._

"She always hugged me first, but she always held you the longest."

_Two boys curled up on an extravagant couch. A fireplace that could never match the warmth of his mother's arms. A shawl that always smelled of berries and roses._

"She always had her arm around me, but she always let you sleep in her lap."

_Sunlight filtering through leaves. A warm draft. A soft bloom. Swaying grass. Gentle fingers through short hair._

"She always whispered goodnight to me, but she always kissed you."

_'Goodnight, Dante'. Soft clicks of modest heels on a thick rug. A long, tender press of lips on a boy's temple. Warmth that hovered and lasted for what felt like an eternity, promising gentle dreams._

"She knew what leaving the house meant for her that day, but she did it anyway to find you."

_Fire. Chaos. Blood. Fear. Orange skies and black smoke. A sword clutched in shaking, bloodied hands far too small to possibly wield it. But also the sound of someone calling his name, so far off in the distance._

_'Where are you, Vergil?!'_

_Such agency. Such urgency._

_The sound of a mother's love._

"How is that not proof that she loved you more than anything?"

Vergil's head dips when he leans forward and presses his forehead to cold stone. His eyes, veiled in a wet sheen, slowly close, and he feels warmth trail down his cheeks as his shoulders begin to quiver. He hasn't cried in years. Decades. Once he thought it was a sign of weakness. Now, it is liberation.

"I'm here." He whispers to a memory, and beneath the press of his skin on granite, all around him, he feels a familiar warmth circle and swirl. Petals of purple and yellow scatter as the wind whispers back.

_I've found you._

_Welcome home._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank y'all for reading!! 💖💖


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